This modest brick depot marks the ground where American blood first spilled in the Civil War. President Street Station was built in 1850 as the Baltimore terminus of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad — it remains the oldest surviving railroad station structure in the country. On April 19, 1861, just one week after Confederate artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter, the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry arrived here by train en route to Washington to defend the capital.
The problem was that Baltimore in 1861 had no through rail connection: trains from the north arrived at President Street Station, their cars were uncoupled and horse-drawn through the city streets to the Camden Street Station on the west side. As the soldiers were being transported through the city, a pro-Confederate mob attacked them with paving stones and pistols. The soldiers fired back.
When the fighting ended, four soldiers and twelve civilians were dead — the first fatalities of the Civil War. Maryland teetered on the edge of secession for the next several weeks; if it had joined the Confederacy, Washington would have been surrounded. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and arrested Maryland legislators to prevent secession.
The station was later used as a prison camp for Confederate soldiers. It now houses a Civil War Museum focused on those April days.